Ahmedou Ould – Abdallah, President Centre4s

Below a summary of my oral presentation

For its annual conference, the Baku Forum has rightly selected this most central theme: ‘’building resilience to global challenges.’’ Migration, whatever regular or irregular, is of concern to many states if not or all of them: those of origin, transit and destination. Today, ignoring migrations challenges amounts to a huge legal case.

 

These Challenges are interlinked to demography, criminal activities and corruption. The world over, civil wars and external military interventions have fuelled and continue to feed fear, poverty and massive migrations. Irresponsible governance, based on ethnicity and unpunished corruption, is its major lubricant. Internal, continental or intercontinental it deserves to be courageously addressed.

Many of world problems – civil wars, environmental degradations and domestic inequality as well as resources scarcity – are often linked to migrations as its victims or consequences or causes.

The world over – continents, regions and countries – migration is more than ever a defying challenge. A seemingly unstoppable one and moreover concomitant to many others: insecurity, climate change and environmental degradation, demography, civil wars and external military interventions. Thus, the sources of migrations, more than migrations themselves, are the issue and call for solutions.

That issue is made worse by multiple extra factors affecting countries of origin and those of migrants’ transit and destination. That is in addition to insecurity for all including migrants themselves in their country of origin, on their way to destination and even once there.

The question is what are the causes of these continued flows of migrants the world over? There is the strong demographic growth in particular in countries of departures. At the same time, there is the demographic deficit in countries of destination and thus an appeal to an underpaid needed labor force. Moreover, external military interventions and subsequent anarchy increase population fragilities and inter-ethnic infightings. Finally, these factors lead to a generalized local and regional insecurity, a starting point to intercontinental migrations.

Environmental degradation, related or not to wars, water and food scarcity are additional factors increasing refugees population.

Worldwide, the number of refugees and internally displaced persons is estimated at over 100 million in 2022. It still is increasing year after year.

Though facing lesser refugees and internally displaced persons than many other countries, Europeans and Americans feel their domestic security and populations homogeneity threatened by an ever increasing flow of migrants. At the same time, little attention is given to their demographic deficits and thus the higher demand for low level services.

Facing these huge and often daunting challenges, world leaders should seriously address migration, an unnecessary politicized global defy.